"Is Zara OK?": 30 Pics Of Bizarre Items That Are Being Sold At Zara Right Now

Zara is not a company without its share of controversies. From pollution to child labor, the fast fashion industry seems to be attempting a speedrun of all the unethical things a company can do. Its factories in Brazil faced accusations of slave labor, while some customers in Turkey and elsewhere have purchased Zara items, only to find notes inside demanding people actually get the wages they are owed.  

So imagine you actually spend your hard-earned money on one of the items here, then get a little guilt note inside, telling you that you are supporting a company that refuses to pay its workers what they are owed. If you wonder how much that could be, employees in Bangladesh are sometimes paid less than $40 a month. 

You would think that all these “savings” could be used to hire more competent designers, but Zara seems to have a cost-limiting strategy there as well. Both MaXhosa by Laduma, an African brand and designer Tuesday Bassen have accused the company of stealing their work. So it’s not entirely clear if Zara can be blamed for the items in this list, as they may have just copy-pasted a design from someone else. 

The processes involved in fast fashion might be enough to limit any real feedback on these items. Zara’s one business model states that once a design is finalized, it should be up for sale in a store (generally multiple) within ten to twelve days. It’s quite easy to see poor customer satisfaction with an item is unimportant. After all, everything is cheap and Zara can bet on at least a small portion of the items becoming fashionable. 

As it produces around half a billion (with a b) items a year, they can’t all be winners. Indeed, one of the main criticisms of fast fashion is that it has huge carbon emissions producing poor-quality clothing that will end up in a landfill anyway. Zara isn’t alone here, its rivals like H&M operate with a similar model. 

Many of the items here look like they were taken straight from a collection of first-draft ideas. Zara itself reports that most items are designed in less than a week. And it shows. This only makes sense when you realize that Zara, by its own reports, aims to add 12,000 new items to its collections every single year. Reportedly, around 30,000 designs are rejected. If these were the winners, we are dying to see what were the losers. 

Zara waves off the criticism of its process by stating that it can modify existing designs within two weeks to match shifts in demand. Executives argue that a shorter product life cycle helps them match consumer preferences, although we would love to hear and see what a focus group said about some of these denim monstrosities. 

Why exactly denim features so heavily is unclear. Certainly, workwear, in a case of blue-collar stolen valor, has become fashionable, however, denim is just one subset of materials that fit into this category. It’s entirely possible that Zara knows it can make denim very cheaply and is trying to boost its popularity. Cynics might also argue that these items make the rest of their collection look better in comparison.